


Like Clockwork

by Writegirl



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Chance Meetings, Developing Relationship, First Meetings, Male-Female Friendship, Spy Stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writegirl/pseuds/Writegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seemed that every ten years, no matter where he was in the world, he ran into her. Phil couldn't say whether it was design or chance, but it was always memorable. Five meetings in the life of Phil Coulson and Natasha Romanoff.</p><p> </p><p><i> "Afterward… they wanted me to be like him. Inhumanly strong, unbelievable reflexes, able to heal from damn near anything, but I couldn’t. I was stronger, faster, smarter, but it wasn’t enough. It was never </i>enough."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1982

        1982 was an interesting year.  
       Ground was broken for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. The Falklands War began and ended. CDs were made available in Germany. There were other things that happened, but those were the three that stuck out in Phil Coulson’s mind when he thought about it.  
       It was also the year he first met Natasha Romanoff.  
       He was twenty two, eleven months out of college with double bachelors in chemistry and applied engineering when the CIA recruited him. The sales pitch of saving the world wasn’t what convinced him. It was memories of James Bond and Maxwell Smart, Vietnam and the threat of the Cold War becoming the next hot one. He wasn’t destined to serve his country the way his father and brother did: humping through foreign countries while bombs burst overhead. When he agreed, signed his contracts and passed the evaluations he found himself in the Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology.  
        His parents thought he worked full time for a small technology firm in Maryland, developing the next breakthrough in microprocessors. In actuality he came into the office once every two weeks, read a small summary of the work being done, made corrections, and returned to Langley. When the CMOS 65C02 was released in June his name would appear on the patent along with four other developers he’d barely seen.  
       It wasn’t the life he had imagined for himself. His initial plans were to join the Army after college, a tradition that dated back almost a hundred years in his family. Every male Coulson since the Civil War gave himself to service. Some, like his Uncle James, made it their life. Instead he spent most of his time bent over an IBM 5150 scrolling through classified data and working at the edge of the cutting edge of military technology. He saw some of the other agents, Field Officers who wandered in from other countries with the same vacant expressions and paranoid habits. As far as he was concerned crunching data in a Langley basement was better than freezing to death waiting for orders in Moscow.  
       Besides, he wasn’t really into shooting people.  
       It was luck, or fate, that brought them together. He was in the break room, a place he normally avoided, when she walked in with her arms filled with folders. She was pretty in an awkward way; dark brown hair in a single thick braid and horn rim glasses hiding half her face. The skirt and shirt were both light lavender, her shoes plain beige. She eyed the vending machine before shuffling everything to one arm and using her now free hand to dig for change. He knew when he saw the first folder slip that she was going to lose them all.  
       “Crap,” she dropped her change, hand slamming down on the pile, but the ones in the center were already sliding free.  
       “I got it.” He half-dived out of his chair and wrapped his arms around her, letting the files come to rest on his chest. It wasn’t until everything came to a stop that he realized in this position he was practically hugging her, one silk-covered breast pressed against his arm.  
       That close he could see the blush rush its way up her neck and spill over her cheeks. “Thanks.”  
       “My pleasure.”  
       What followed was thirty seconds of trying to figure out how to extricate themselves without spilling the files over the break-room floor. Finally, she stopped moving and cocked her head. “Can you just…stand there a minute?”  
       Phil nodded. “Yes, of course.”  
       Faster than he thought possible she had the folders in two neat piles on the table and knelt down to collect her change. “Thanks again,” she said as she worked. “Meyers would have killed me if I messed those up.”  
       “No problem.” He held out his hand. “I’m Philip, by the way.”  
       The brunette stood and brushed off her skirt. “Natalie.”  
       Somehow, between her name and a shared Pepsi he managed to get wrangled into helping her transport her files to the archives. He found out where she was from (Nashville) and he told her about his brother in Maine.  
       “You can’t come in here,” she informed him when he started to follow her through the large double doors of the archives. She gestured to the blue paneling above them. “Security clearance.”  
       “Right. Silly of me to forget.” Not silly really, since he’d been following her ass since they got off the elevator and couldn’t even tell how he’d gotten there. He sat his half of her files on a narrow desk.  
        “I think if I take a few at a time, I’ll be fine,” Natalie reassured him as she hefted the files in her arms.  
       “Good.” She smiled, and he could feel himself blushing. “Just try not to get too many papercuts.”  
       She raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Will do.”  
       It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later that he realized he didn’t have his ID badge, and an hour backtracking over every inch of the building to know that it was truly lost. It took ten years for him to find out that the security breach that occurred later that day in R&D, resulting in the loss of data concerning a promising cold fusion device was attributed to the Black Widow.


	2. 1992

          When he saw her he almost blew his cover.  
          Her hair was dyed jet black with electric blue streaks breaking up the solid darkness, the braid traded in for a pageboy cut that made her face look fuller. Heavy makeup turned her grey eyes green and changed the subtleties of her bone structure while the outfit dared anyone to try and remember her face, but it was her. She moved through the crowd of protesters, drifting in and out of his line of sight.  
          He prayed he hadn’t been spotted.  
          “I’ve got eyes on a possible hostile,” Phil muttered from his position half behind a kiosk. “Female, black and blue hair, leather bustier moving southwest across the plaza.”  
          “Got her.” The sniper was nineteen stories away, high powered rifle trained on the crowd. A kid, by Coulson’s standards: twenty-one and already the best sniper the army had to offer.  
          “I need verification. Is it Romanov?” He knew it was her, but the CIA had more than one snafu result from an unexpected double.  
          “Intel sent, waiting for response.”  
          Phil could have cursed. The Black Widow wasn’t a part of his mission. He’d been given orders to be invisible, to get to his contact, get the information, then escort the package to a safe location for later delivery. O’Neill didn’t trust anyone but him to bring the mark in so he was playing field agent. It felt good, getting out of the darkness of his office and into the field. The five year old he’d been was bouncing inside him, screaming about this being what they were meant to do.  
          “Information verified, it’s the Widow. Orders?”  
          He knew what the orders were, so did Barton. Any hostiles were to be removed quickly and quietly, which would have worked if someone hadn’t decided that a large scale labor protest needed to be held in the usually quiet courtyard adjacent to Alexanderplatz.  
          “Is she moving towards Gregor?”  
          “Negative. She’s heading for the subway.”  
          Coincidence, then, them both being in Berlin, being here. His boss would consider it a win, taking out the Black Widow. The cold war might have been over, but O’Neill hadn’t forgotten her infiltrating the Agency under his watch.  
          He was about to give the order when she turned. There wasn’t any cold calculation in her eyes, violence in her stance. For one moment she was alone, lost, and every bit of it showed on her face. It wasn’t a carefully staged act, not like the file folders, not like the seduction of the agent she had turned just a few years before.  
          “Keep eyes on Gregor,” Coulson ordered.  
          The rest of the mission proceeded without problem. In a matter of hours he and Gregor were on a plane back to the US. He’d barely gotten off at La Guardia before O’Neill was jumping down his throat.  
          Phil let out a long breath when Director O’Neill’s door slammed behind him. Ten years in the agency and he hadn’t had a dressing down like that. O’Neill’s secretary sat at her desk, typing and avoiding eye contact. He doubted she’d heard more than the tail end of the one-sided conversation, but it would have been enough. “Helen,” he said shortly.  
          She glanced up, brown eyes sympathetic. “Phil.”  
          He was leaving the office when he noticed someone was sitting in the corner chair. He didn’t know the man, but the single word on his ID badge meant that he was very important. He’d only seen the ‘ACCESS’ pass once before when the President toured the facility.  
          The stranger fell into step with him as they left the outer office. He didn’t say anything, and Phil took the chance to observe him. He was tall, taller than him by a head. He carried himself with an ease that reminded Phil of Mr. Canetti, the retired boxer who lived in the apartment across from him growing up. They walked in only slightly uncomfortable silence until they hit the elevators.  
          “Why’d you do it?”  
          “Excuse me?”  
          “Black Widow.” The man kept his eyes on the elevator doors, his tone was curious. “There’s been a standing kill order on her for years, and you let her go. What I want to know is why.”  
          Phil took a breath. “Dead, she’s worthless. Alive, she could be turned.” A long shot, but nothing was impossible. “The KGB has been dismantled, and she’s out in the cold. The Widow has information that could be vital to the Agency.”  
          Two weeks later, after blustering from O’Neill and a truly cryptic phone call at five in the morning he was transferred to Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.


	3. 2002

        It was funny, in a way that was less funny and more morbid, that all interrogation rooms looked alike. Coulson thought it had to do with intimidating the target: flat, grey paneled walls, flat grey floor, and an oversized one-way mirror all dwarfing a small metal table and chairs. It didn’t matter if the room was in Washington DC, Tokyo, or Timbuktu, they all had the air of a place used for less than legal dealings that could be hosed down at a moment’s notice. Something enhanced by the industrial drain in the center of the gently sloping floor.  
        She might as well have been sitting in traffic for all the emotion she showed.  
        Natasha Romanova, a.k.a Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. Agents bearing that codename had given the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and just about every other intelligence agency in the world fits for over fifty years. Russia’s best and most closely guarded secret.  
        The last bearer of the code name sat in the interrogation room, hands folded primly in front of her, feet crossed at the ankles. Her eyes flickered around the room on occasion, settling for a moment here and there. Protocol stated that she be brought in bagged, her hands and feet secured to floor and table, and left to wait. The guard was already gone by the time she lifted her hands just enough to remove the black bag letting loose a riot of bright red curls.  
        “How long has she been here?”  
        “Ten hours.”  
        Coulson blinked. “She hasn’t asked for anything?”  
        “Nope.” Barton dropped his feet from the desk. “No food, no water beyond what was already on the table.” He shrugged, the corner of his eyes pulled taunt with strain.  
        “Medical cleared you?”  
        The smirk he received was all the answer he needed.  
        “Just make sure you don’t pull your stitches and bleed out. I might need you.”  
        Clint didn’t answer beyond reaching up and rubbing his shoulder. It was a through and through gunshot wound, courtesy of the Widow. He added it to the list of Barton’s injuries he kept in his head.  
        Phil placed his hand on the scanner near the door, features schooled to blankness. He hadn’t believed it when word came over the wire: A Widow had been captured, alive.  
        She was staring when the section of wall swung open, hands still folded, expression bored.  
        “You don’t remember me, do you?”  
        She smiled. “Should I?”  
        “I remember you.” Phil sat across the table from her. She was wearing plain cotton scrubs given to her after being brought in, complete with jail house slippers, but he kept out of arms reach. “It was in 1982.”  
        She chuckled. “You remember a one year old, agent? Must have made an impression.”  
        “Nice try.”  
        Something in his voice made her small smile fade, so he continued. “You went by Natalie then, Natalie Moore. You dropped your files in the break-room and I helped you. It’s Phil, by the way. Phil Coulson”  
        She leaned forward. “Look at me, Phil. Do I look old enough to have worked…wherever you worked… in 1982?”  
        “No, you don’t.” That had been a shock, seeing her again. She should have been pushing forty, but the woman in front of him didn’t look older that twenty seven, twenty eight at the most. “But pictures don’t lie.”  
He unfolded a black and white photo and pushed it across to her. He’d had to look through the archives to find it. The hardcopy of her personnel file was destroyed years ago when Natalie Moore went missing. Luckily she hadn’t known about Jameson’s scattered attempts to create a digital archive.  
        She gave it a cursory glance and slid the picture back to him. “I don’t wear glasses.”  
        “Do you know why you’re still alive?” He tucked the paper back into his jacket.  
        She lifted one shoulder. “You have a lousy sniper.”  
        He chuckled at that. “Barton takes getting used to, but he’s not to blame, not entirely. Ten years ago I thought you could be of use to this organization. I shared what I knew of you with Director Fury. It wasn’t much. You are very, very thorough about erasing anything but your track record, but it was enough.”  
        “So, I should be thanking you?”  
        “No.” He stood. It was a poor intimidation tactic, but if he didn’t get her to crack in the next five minutes she’d get a bullet in the brain. “After Saigon, after Johannesburg, I thought differently. You’re dangerous, and our job is neutralizing dangerous people. Yesterday Barton saw something in you, something that gave him pause. I saw the same thing in 1992 near Alexanderplatz.” Her chin dipped. “We’re all bad people, Romanoff, but sometimes we can be good, too.”


	4. 2012

        Phil didn’t hear her come in, but that was nothing new. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper, not since 1997 and the seven inch scar that ran from his neck to the center of his chest, but the woman had to be part cat. As far as meeting places went they’d had their share of odd ones: his personal favorite was in the back of an ice cream truck in Compton, California. Still, it was strange to walk into his kitchen at four in the morning for milk to find Natasha sitting at his table.  
        Thank God he’d decided to put a robe on.  
        She was dressed to go out; outfit just the right side of slinky, hair a myriad of curls that framed her face perfectly, but she looked…sad. That was something he couldn’t ever remember. Natasha Romanoff smiled, she cajoled, on occasion she went completely blank, but she was never sad.  
        He closed his robe over his Captain America t-shirt and boxers. If she'd come there as Natasha she would be curled on the couch, maybe cooking something that would strip his tastebuds and have them both laughing as he ran for milk, but something told him she wasn't. “ Agent. Something I can help you with?”  
        “I don’t age.”  
        Phil padded to the table and sat beside her, careful not to enter her line of sight.  
        “It’s what they did to me,” Natasha continued. She kept her eyes focused on the window above his sink. “They said there would be side effects, an adjustment period. The serum wasn’t complete, but they did what they could. Fifty nine other candidates died before they came for me.  
        “I see you watching me, Phil. Looking for lines, grey hair, but you won’t find any. You have briefs on the Red Room, pictures and charts, but nothing…nothing can describe it. Nothing can…” she squinted. “How old do you think I am?”  
        He studied her. “My age, I suppose. Maybe a little older.”  
        “I’m old enough to be your grandmother.” Her left hand touched her face, skittered down her neck before falling away. “I was on a date tonight, with a boy born in 1980.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Not bad for someone born in 1918.”  
        Coulson blinked but didn’t respond. He’d read Natasha’s file, what was within his security clearance, and this hadn’t been there.  
        “I never told Fury, if that’s what you’re wondering.” One red nail tapped on the dark wood of the kitchen table. “I told him everything but that.” She looked at him for the first time. “I spy’s supposed to keep some secrets, right?”  
        “Tasha…” He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want her secrets, her friendship had been enough.  
        “I was the Room’s only success,” she continued. “The only one who survived their attempts at recreating the super soldier serum. Their miracle child. Years of trying, of modifications, of subject after subject failing, and I survived.”  
        She talked for an hour before he felt comfortable enough to get up and make coffee. About being brought by the Red Room in 1926, an eight year old orphan from Stalingrad with no one to care what happened to her. About training to be a killer with the other girls and boys who grew with her, trained with her. Who died in the years leading to World War II when it seemed the world needed nothing but a spark to explode. About the friends who disappeared, the rumors, the screams in the night. Then the night they came for her, fresh from America with a sample of Captain America’s blood.  
        “It hurt,” she said, looking at him for the first time. “I don’t know what Steve had to say about it, but it hurt like hell. And afterwards… they wanted me to be like him. Super strong and super fast, able to heal from damn near anything, but I couldn’t. I was stronger, faster, smarter, but it wasn’t enough. It was never _enough._ ”  
        When she stopped talking, taking a sip of coffee long gone cold, Phil cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t have told me all this, Tasha. I…” _have to report this to Fury, to include it in your files for others to see._ There were already rumors about her, about how she could run farther and fight harder than she should have, but nothing substantiated. Her physical evaluations put her in the top of the top percentile, but nothing superhuman.  
        “You’ll do what’s right, Phil.” Natasha’s eyes were warm, matching the smile she gave him. “You always do.”  
        She drained the rest of her coffee and gathered her purse and shoes. He watched her walk to his front door and leave, closing it gently behind her. He was about to stand and throw the deadbolt when he heard it click into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics Natasha was trained by the Red Room, a Soviet organization ran within the KGB to produce super spies. She was genetically and cybernetically altered (at least in the comics). It's never explicitly stated in the comics that Natasha received a version of the super soldier serum, I'm guessing they would have tried their damndest to get their hands on it after Captain America showed up on the scene.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Since I'm not a spy all spy stuff is made up on the spot, so I apologize to any actual spies who may be reading this and cringing inside.


End file.
